On Tuesday, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) organised a rally against the genocide in Gaza as part of its European election campaign in the Neukölln district of Berlin. Around 100 workers and young people participated in the event.

SGP European election candidates Christoph Vandreier, Ulrich Rippert, Angela Niklaus and Tamino Wilck presented an international socialist perspective against the barrage of war propaganda and genocidal pro-war course of the federal coalition government and all the establishment parties.

To commemorate the Nakba 76 years ago and demand an end to the genocide, “around ten thousand people took to the streets in Germany. In London alone, a quarter of a million people demonstrated,” Angela Niklaus said in opening her speech. “We in the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei salute the courageous protesters in Europe and around the world.”

The ruling class was trying to suppress the protests with police-state methods “because it is afraid! They are afraid that the anti-genocide protests will come together with the social anger of the working class against the government and the union bosses,” she said. “Large sections of the population are becoming impoverished,” and instead of money being invested in social support systems, “hundreds of billions of euros are being spent on arming the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces], supplying weapons systems and militarising society.”

Anyone who rejected genocide and war should join the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei because “We reject any national perspective.” The struggle against the bourgeoisie and its genocidal and war course “cannot be won with Varoufakis and his MERA25 [European Realistic Disobedience Front], not with RIO or any other pseudo-left grouping or with more militant trade unionists. Their perspective means subordination to the institutions of the bourgeoisie,” Niklaus said. “They all stand for the preservation of the capitalist system, which is responsible for the Nakba and two world wars.”

“With our international socialist perspective, we rely on the international working class,” which is the only social force capable of “ending genocide and war.”

Tamino Wilck, an SGP member and member of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), focussed his remarks on the police violence against students and other opponents of the war.

The state was reacting with brutal repression to the spreading wave of protests at universities in many countries, “which is strongly reminiscent of the protests of 1968.” “Just as ruling class foreign policy once again supports genocide, it is also returning to the methods of the Nazis in domestic policy.”

Wilck described the police violence against the students and the hate campaign unleashed by politicians and the media, above all Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Liberal Democrat, FDP) and the tabloid Bild, against lecturers at Berlin universities because they had declared in an open letter that it was their duty “to protect their students and not to hand them over to police violence under any circumstances.”

Wilck called on pupils and students: “We must go to the workplaces and mobilise workers against the genocide. Workers must prepare protests and strikes to stop the war industry.”

He linked the German government’s unrestricted support for the fascist Netanyahu government and domestic repression to the NATO war against Russia. He described how “The German government is working with open anti-Semites and right-wing extremists in Ukraine to realise its war against Russia.”

“At the end of April, our comrade Bogdan Syrotiuk, a leading member of the Young Guard of the Bolshevik-Leninists, was arrested by the Ukrainian secret service” because, as a “principled Marxist and internationalist, he is fighting for an end to the war in Ukraine and the unification of the Russian and Ukrainian working class.”

SGP chairman Christoph Vandreier said, “As the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, we are running in the European elections to build an international movement against war, against genocide and against its root cause, capitalism.” This meant that “here in Germany, a movement against German militarism” must be built. “Eighty years after the Second World War, German tanks are rolling against Russia again and the ruling class is returning to the methods of genocide.”

Vandreier referred to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who had “applied for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.” But not only Netanyahu and Gallant belong “in the dock, but also ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.”

“But,” Vandreier warned, “there should be no illusions that the International Criminal Court or the United Nations or any capitalist regime on this globe will stop the genocide. You might as well ask a wolf to become a vegetarian.”

Vandreier stressed:

The genocide in Gaza is part of a global conflict over the redivision of the world. In Ukraine, NATO is waging a proxy war against Russia, which has already claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people. In order to assert their geostrategic interests, they were even risking nuclear war. And the war against Russia is only the precursor to a war against China, which would take on completely different dimensions.

In the last 30 years, the NATO powers had “waged wars that have cost well over a million lives.” The images from Gaza showed the atrocities they are prepared to commit in the fight for their geostrategic and economic interests. “The fact that the NATO powers are returning to the methods of genocide” not only showed the bankruptcy of the Netanyahu regime, the Scholz and Biden governments. It showed “the bankruptcy of the entire capitalist system”.

Vandreier stated emphatically: “If capitalism is not overthrown, conditions like those in Gaza threaten the whole world.” It was not the many workers and young people who express their solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians who were antisemitic. “It is the ruling class in Germany that is continuing its fascistic roots by sending German tanks against Russia, declaring genocide to be a ‘reason of state’ and arming itself to a degree not seen since Hitler.”

Appeals to the parties and governments “that support genocide” were “illusory and reactionary.” This also applied to those in favour of a “multi-polar world order,” who were “pinning their hopes on one capitalist regime or another. None of them will stop the genocide! None of them will prevent the Third World War.”

SGP honorary chairman Ulrich Rippert concluded the rally with a passionate appeal:

We are the only party that is putting the fight against war and genocide at the centre of the election campaign in this European election campaign. And we are not only appealing, we are not only demanding that the international working class intervene, but we are organising this international intervention.

We are a revolutionary international socialist world party. We oppose the national warmongering and the deafening war propaganda cries with the international unity and international co-operation of the working class.

“All the catastrophes that have afflicted humanity in the 20th century—world war, genocide, the dropping of atomic bombs, fascism, economic crises, pandemics” had their cause in capitalism,” said Rippert, a social system “based on private ownership of the means of production and the division of the world into nation states.”

“It is no exaggeration to say that the danger of a third world war has never been as great as it is today. But the countermovement is also on the rise,” explained Rippert, referring to the radicalisation of the class struggle, which was also evident in the industrial action taken by thousands in Europe and around the world against poor working conditions and wages. However, it was necessary to “break through the straitjacket of the trade unions and develop a broad mobilisation of the working class.” To do this, the working class needed “its own party, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei.”

Many participants at the rally listened to the speeches with great interest and subsequently discussed the issues raised with SGP members. There was wide agreement that the international working class must be mobilised and united for the struggle against war and genocide.

The clear words of the candidates about the responsibility of the federal coalition government of the Social Democrats, Liberal Democrats and Greens for the genocide and police violence met with great approval among the audience. “Finally, a party that really stands up for the oppressed Palestinians,” applauded three high school students from Berlin and Brandenburg, who were impressed by the party’s socialist perspective as an answer to war and capitalism.

Nadine, who fled to Germany to escape the war in Syria and uses a pseudonym for fear of deportation, said, “Everything you say is true.” She particularly liked the fact that “the SGP is in favour of the unity of the international working class.” “Only together can we end the wars.” The governments of the imperialist powers “only have their interests in mind, they are not interested in us.”

Another participant, from the former Yugoslavia, also rejected the division of “people according to nationalities.” She accused the “German government, with the Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer,” of having “bombed her homeland” and forced her family to flee. “We are only second-class people here. I am not allowed to stay because there is no more war in my country.”

She angrily alluded to the abject poverty into which large sections of the working class in the former Yugoslavia were thrown: “But what is there!” Germany had “already reverted to war” in order to assert its interests.

A student at a Berlin university said he thought it was right that the SGP was fighting against the genocide. He has read the World Socialist Web Site and had also read a lot about the SGP’s perspective but said he did not understand why the SGP always talked about “class struggle,” about “the bourgeoisie and greed for profit.” Wouldn’t a “simpler vocabulary be better,” he asked, instead of words like “socialist class consciousness?”

In answering, Angela Niklaus emphasised the need to clearly name the two irreconcilable classes, “bourgeoisie and proletariat,” and to explain the reasons for class war and war. “There is no shortcut to the necessary political struggle.” Anything else would just be “a con trick,” which would prevent serious struggle and lead to failure.

Several participants reported their fears for family members remaining in the Gaza Strip. Some had not received any sign of life for weeks. Hussein, who comes from Egypt, emphasised how important it was to understand the “entire historical development” of Zionism and the oppression in Palestine since 1947/1948. The book “The Logic of Zionism—From Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide” by David North is dedicated to explaining this historical context and met with great interest.